Blind Man's Buff
by LISSE, Dirck van der, Oil on canvas, 120 x 140 cm
In the 1620s and 1630s, Dutch aristocrats furthered a new vogue for particular kinds of history and portrait painting, of ‘pastoral’ scenes involving the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses in lush, idealized landscapes. In 1635, four painters made a series of pastoral paintings for the Stadhouder’s court, chronicling the popular story of Amarillis and Mirtillo. In a scene contributed by van der Lisse (one of the numerous followers of Cornelis Poelenburgh), maidens play blind man’s buff with the blindfolded shepherd Mirtillo.